Mabinogi - Review

Prior to reading I'd like to notify current readers of this review that this post is well over a year old. This was posted around the time Open Beta for Mabinogi opened. This review has been updated by Seuro who has taken the time to write a response. His review follows mine.


So, I mentioned about Mabinogi in probably the most casual sense possible. So I will review it.

Mabinogi is a korean MMO (as if there are many MMOs that aren't korean nowadays)made by Nexon. This company is mainly responsible for bringing the official version of Maple Story (shudder), Audition, and Shattered Galaxy (Known as Tactical Commander in Korea). Generally, they're a big company and the localization of Mabinogi made me jump off my chair, fluff up the seat to fix the creases and yell out in joy.


I feel that Mabinogi is one of those games that pushes the MMO envelope of questing and click-grinding. There are many aspects to character development that make this game amazing.

I'll start off with all the casual "Life" stuff that is capable. In general, Mabinogi is a very freeform game that gives users a variety of jobs to handle. Here's the catch, there are no job classes. Your job is determined by the choices you make and what you want to do. You want to be a master cook and open up a shop? Do it. You wanna be a tailor and customize clothes for people? Do it. You want to be a musician and compose and play songs for people on the street for food money? Do it. You want to simply play casually, not really in the game, but need something to kill time? DO IT. What I'm about to say isn't a comparison. Rather, it's just a statement. If you liked RO, and enjoyed the open nature of it, you'll like Mabinogi just as much. With light ambient music, and decent graphics, it's the RO2 you wish happened but didn't.

Now for battle system. I can hear your thoughts. "Hey Zerreth, it's an MMO, it's just another point-and-click-grindfest. What the hell's the difference? If you rave on about skills, then isn't that just pointless?" Yeah, you're right. Funny thing though, if it were like that, then I wouldn't be talking about the battle system, now would I?
The battle system itself is actually very simple, and the general course of battle is straight forward. However, it's a bit different from a point and click. After setting battle mode to manual, you can control the attacks of your character. Generally, your character has a set of 4 or so moves. Normal attack, Smash, Counter, Defence. There's magic and other physical skills but if I told you all that, then it wouldn't be fun would it? Also, like some other games, these 4 moves generally have a Rock Paper Scissors element to them. Smash breaks defense, defense breaks normal, normal breaks smash, and Counter breaks other physicals (so magic is the key against counter). However, your weapons all have a combo number on it, for example, some weapons have a combo of 2 and others have a combo of 3. Depending on your timing, and your luck dungeon crawling can be easy and hard, but not matter what, it will keep you on your feet. Casting any skill besides normal attack takes time to prepare (aka casting time) and so you can't just pull of smashes and defense so quickly. Timing is key and with good strategy, and teamplay battles are.... fun. (Oh my god I said it. I said battles are fun in an MMO)


Another aspect of the game that's interesting is age. Unlike any other MMO (though if you can find one, I stand corrected) your character ages. Depending on the game server, and what they set it to, your character will grow one year every week or so. This is a really cool aspect of the game. You can create your character at 10 years old and after playing a year or so, you've got an old man, with a beer belly bashing monsters.

Character customization is really amazing. Besides being able to customize the weapon you own, you can hire tailors (other players who've dedicated themselves to tailoring) to customize clothes and change colors for you. It's like the paint dye system in RO, except you can modify everything about the clothes. This also helps in guilds where a dedicated tailor could tailor emblems and color sets for other members.

There's a subtitle for Mabinogi. It's "Fantasy Life" and I'll stand by it really. When you become a tailor or a muscian, your stats and additional skills don't help in battle. It's not like, when you become a bard, you learn skills to destroy monsters with music. You just play it, and so you can get by not fighting at all. It'll probably be harder, but it's possible. NPCs are programmed to have a "relationship" factor with your character. They remember who you are, if you've failed any quests, how often you've worked part-time for them and depending on what kind of person you are and your relationship with other NPCs, they can actually like you or hate you.


Now for the bad parts.

Since it is an MMO, there is grinding. Lots of it. Whether it's harvesting potatoes, milling corn, or bashing monsters, there's grinding. You may become more proficient because of grinding, but you're still grinding. There will always be grinding, no matter what form it takes. Get used to it. Mabinogi, in general, is a demanding game. Sure, it's a fantasy life, but it can also easily end up being a second job. Because of the "age" system, it may feel more like it than not.

You can technically get every skill in the game. It doesn't mean you'll be proficient at everything, but it's possible. Does that hinder me? Not really, but I know some who like having very defined specializations, and it really isn't a cakewalk from the start. Technically, you CAN start specializing your tailoring or music playing early on, but with such a low level, getting enough materials and money to support yourself while specializing is hard. You can do part time jobs, but the better ones often get filled up very quickly. Since it's still early in terms of when open beta started, everyone generally looks the same. You have many who have begun to tailor, but there's a lot of people who look too similar. Also, the newer generation skills haven't been unlocked yet and so, there's a limit to how well you can specialize a "job."



This ends my review. The following is a comment posted by Seuro, none of which are my words but I feel I should add, not to harass him, but for carefully wording out all the issues that have arisen between my post and his. You can continue reading or continue on to his review.

I honestly have to say I disagree. There are so many things wrong with this game that you do it more justice then it deserves. For those who would be otherwise interested here's a review which chooses to accept the glaring difficulties.

First of all. The economy. Because of the severe lack of itemization everything that shouldn't be, is, extremely overpriced and difficult to get. Most people go without armor, and armor generally remains useless to you for the entire game. (Unless you are, say, a master of defense, of which several I knew, and even then they needed fully upgraded armor and that's very expensive) what helps add to this problem is that rewards from chests and quests (and the lack there of) are not very rewarding at all. You don't get very much gold. You don't get good loot, and enchanting is extremely risky business.

Because of this, this makes going into high level dungeons extremely difficult and unsatisfying. Why run Barri Advanced for four if I can just run Barri Normal for the same shit rewards/money doing two or three runs in a fraction of the time? Seriously.

I find your review to be further biased by the idea that skills being free to train as you please is a 'good idea'. It isn't. If you don't train all the necessary skills you will not excell. I have seen level 1000+ players complain about BOAL Final. Boal. G3. You do G1, that's not so bad, it has a good level curve, it's easy to do, and storywise it's rewarding. G2 is a bunch of running around and really not achieving much in due course of story, and G3? Forget it. G3 is a fucking joke. Finishing g1 and g2 doesn't take anymore then a month to do playing regularly. G3 requires you to be absurdly over leveled for the curve. That's not grinding, that's plain poor game making. Add to all that the absurd amounts of multiaggro from enemies and no real to control that aggro and you have shit sink full of fuck. And I mean that in the most non offensive way possible. Many dungeons are completely impossible without windmill (at least one person with windmill anyway) and that is not okay. That's BROKEN. That is BROKEN gaming. It is 'literally' the only skill you will 'ever' need in a party.

In other words you will always be trying to get stronger but you'll never quite be there. No matter how strong you get you will rarely venture into harder dungeons. The few people who do exceed level 2000. I know, I played for well over a year cause I kept praying and hoping things would change cause I generally adored the way I did combat. It wasn't all point and click, and honestly? That's it's only redeeming feature.

I think you need to get out and play some different games. Mabinogi is a great concept but everything about it is extremely poorly executed. The leveling system takes ridiculous amounts of time (even with free rebirth)

Your review refuses to point out the glaring faults in this game. The dedication it takes to level up just to run certain KEY dungeons goes beyond rational thinking. Again, I think you should reconsider what games you have played and are playing. I know, I know. Sure it has a place in your heart. Good feelings and cheer at all. Still, the best part of this game is the beginning. I thoroughly enjoyed that, but that was all, and that is not enough. In the beginning the rewards and story will pull you in but it will never be enough and the gear you have will generally always feel useless unless you have leveled it up and are fighting enemies which simply won't one hit you. Most dungeons will always have enemies which can do so.

Mabinogi just isn't that great man. There's just so much more and so much better out there. I hope you get something out of this.